Friday, September 11, 2009 MOSCOW: Russia will not sell Iran any "offensive weapons," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday, amid reports that Russia has been supplying sophisticated weaponry to the Islamic republic. "We are not selling any offensive weapons to Iran," Lavrov told a gathering in Moscow. "With Iran, we have not done anything that contradicts our international undertakings."Lavrov on Tuesday strongly denied that a cargo ship whose supposed seizure by pirates sparked an international mystery was secretly carrying sophisticated S-300 anti-aircraft missiles bound for Iran. The Arctic Sea, a Maltese-flagged vessel with a Russian crew, was hijacked near Sweden in late July before being recovered by the Russian navy in the Atlantic Ocean several weeks later.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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